


Wind-touched

by HSavinien



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Female Baze Malbus, Female Chirrut Îmwe, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Introspection, POV Baze Malbus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:49:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26252194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HSavinien/pseuds/HSavinien
Summary: If Baze is stone, Chirrut is wind.
Relationships: Chirrut Îmwe/Baze Malbus
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	Wind-touched

The stone of Jedha was carved out by wind and water for eons before sentient life first walked and flew upon it. Even now, the winds whip sand into crevices and against NiJedha’s walls, carving them into new, sinuous shapes as they go. Baze Malbus feels like part of that, sometimes, core of stone, but outsides changed and reshaped by the forces around her to something that the original rock would not recognize. The Temple is built with winds in mind, uses them to shape its walls into artwork. She wishes she was the bulwark that Chirrut calls her, to better protect her flitting, laughing, Force-blessed companion. Chirrut moves like a breeze herself, staff tapping pings back to her echo-box as she whirls through the marketplace, her robes flaring around her. When she’s still, it’s the stillness of a bird poised for flight, no matter if she’s up again in a moment or remains in that state of readiness through hours of meditation. 

Baze becomes the bulwark after the Temple falls; there is no other choice that fits her. She armors herself in plasteel and thick jumpsuit, binds part of her hair into the war braids of her long-gone clan. The heavy repeater cannon cooling-tank on her back makes her move more deliberately, her steps enough sometimes to frighten off the scoundrels she’s hired to deter. 30 kilos of weight and a deadly arsenal on a tall, broad woman already treading with a killer’s step. Chirrut teases that she’s becoming a statue and threatens to drag her out and plant her with the others in the desert when she sleeps. Baze just watches her and, when she can bear speaking, threatens to give all the foul tarine tea Chirrut likes away to pilgrims as a health remedy. Chirrut’s more frenetic now than poised. She pulls Baze with her, loping after as Chirrut ambushes Imperial patrols and passes seditious notes under trooper’s gazes, her face serene and innocent and crystalline as a new dawn, calling for prayers as she gambols through NiJedha.

Chirrut is no longer simply wind. She’s the rush of air that carries a bolt from her lightbow, sharpened and edged in crackling energy. She would call it the Force, honing her.  _ Baze’s trust in the Force crumbled to ash with the Temple, when the Imperials started despoiling it of all that had been holy, stripping the kyber from the sacred grottoes below, expelling the elders and children into the streets, and desecrating the texts carved into the walls. Her heart contracted around the wound, until only a fraction of its movement remains. _ It is enough for her, to evacuate the children, menace the carrion-seekers come to strip the pieces from their city, trail Chirrut, exhausted and hurting but still moving. Baze follows, inevitably, dreading the day when Chirrut will crumble too, movement finally arrested and energy grounded into nothingness.

What is the rock, without the wind to carve it lovingly, to keep it changing and moving and living?


End file.
